Arson link to heritage school fire

THE Tasmania Fire Service is treating a blaze at the old Claremont primary school as suspicious after a number of similar incidents during the past 12 months.

Fire crews and police attended the Cadbury Rd incident just after 3.30pm yesterday with the blaze contained at 5.15pm.

TFS district officer Rod Sherrin said the fire began in an outbuilding that was destroyed at the rear of the former school. Mr Sherrin said the blaze jumped into the roof space of the 1924 heritage-listed building. He said the blaze — the second at the school in five weeks — was being treated as suspicious.

“There’s no power connected to the site and we have had a number of calls out here in the past 12 months with small fires,” Mr Sherrin said.

“The police have indicated they have had several incidents of vandalism.”

He estimated the fire caused $165,000 damage.

“When we arrived, the building out the back ... was venting out of the window spaces and, by the time we got other crews here, the building was fully engulfed,” he said.

“We concentrated on containing the fire to that particular building but it did get into the roof part of the main building, which is heritage listed.”

Crews removed roofing to prevent the fire spreading.

Tasmania Police’s Inspector Peter Harriss said forensics and fire investigators would try to identify the cause of the fire today.

“There’s obviously no power supply to the building, so at this stage we will treat it as suspicious,” he said.

Former WIN TV newsreader Anna McMahon and her husband Tony Ellis own the old school site and had plans to house 450 people in a $79 million subdivision before putting it back up for sale last year. In April, the Mercury revealed the couple had spent more than $25,000 fighting vandalism since buying the site.

Mr Sherrin said the owners would be responsible for cordoning off the buildings and removing the rubble.

He said it would be dampened down because of the risk of some asbestos.